For the most part, I’m a fan of the rule of law. In a civilized world, the dispassionate delivery of justice is just the normal way of things. Libya, for the time being, is most decidedly not part of the civilized world. Being in the midst of a revolution tends to preclude a country from practicing some of the niceties. That’s why I’m a little confused by the talking heads and news readers who seem to think the Libyan revolutionaries should have paused during a running firefight to swear out an arrest warrant for their recently deposed head of state.

Frankly, I’m more than a little surprised he wasn’t more badly mauled than he was. The guy had been torturing his own people for more than four decades. Does anyone really expect them to sit tight and wait for the gendarmerie to take their former dictator into custody? We’re not talking about your run of the mill serial killer here. After you’ve spent a lifetime blowing airliners out of the sky, harboring terrorists, and committing a laundry list of war crimes, I think this is a fine example of someone to whom the usual rules need not apply.

Personally, I haven’t lost any sleep because he will never see the inside of The Hague. Trying a lunatic like Gaddafi for “crimes” makes the atrocities he committed seem entirely too trivial. Being gunned down in the dirt and then left to rot in an underpowered deep freeze seems like an altogether more fitting end for a sadistic madman. The only shame is that they can’t find a way to revive him and do it again. Sic semper tyrannis.